Database creation can involve the further creation of physical backing files (e.g., data file and log). The physical files typically cannot be shared across databases, which leads to inefficient input/output (I/O) patterns (e.g., no sequential I/O for a transaction log) as well difficulties of growing those files on demand (or wasting reserved space if the files are not used). Additionally, the creation of such a database is slow because files need to be zeroed. This makes the hosting of multiple databases in large collocation or cloud environments inefficient.